I’m trying to install latest Tentacle on Win2008 R2 Server and getting the error that “unable to create folder in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs”. And the install does not let go past this point - I have an option to retry or to cancel the whole install.
Well, yes, I don’t have permissions to this folder. And it is hardly critical that the desktop shortcuts are created. Yet this causes the whole installation to fail. Any advice?
Hello,
Thanks for getting in touch. If the installer cannot create a shortcut in that location, it will also struggle to properly set itself up on that machine. It will be necessary to run the installer with greater privileges.
We’ve got a detailed guide that lists the permissions that the Tentacle install will need: https://octopus.com/docs/installation/installing-tentacles#InstallingTentacles-Permissions
Regards,
Nick
Nick, I’ve seen this page - it does not say a word about C:/ProgramData. Previous versions of tentacles did not need access to this folder.
Running an install with a greater privileges is not an option - we are talking Corporate IT here. Using Octopus was a fight with them in the first place, asking for more privileges every time there is a new version of tentacle is not going to fly. Is there no workaround for skipping the (pointless) shortcuts?
Hello,
Sorry to hear that. A possible work around would be to install the Tentacle via the command line. Please have a look at this guide: https://octopus.com/docs/installation/installing-tentacles/automating-tentacle-installation
Were you on an older version of Windows Server previously? In Server 2008 it was still in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs and in 2008 R2 it’s now in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
Let me know if you still have issues.
Regards,
Nick
Nick, Quiet installation through cmd and MSI did not do much - it probably run into the same problem, but did not give me an error message.
Regarding version changes - I suspect I had a write access before, but this was closed off recently.
What I did was started normal installation of tentacle, got to the point where I’m faced with and error, but did not cancel anything. Went to c:\Program Files\Octopus Deploy\Tentacle\ copied the whole folder somewhere - a that point all the files there were related to the latest version.
Then I let the installation process fail and rollback the changes. Then I went back to the same folder and replaced old files with the new ones. (Doing that carefully, keeping backups all the way).
Then in Octopus server checked the tentacle health and it displayed the latest version. Not tried deploying yet, so can’t comment if that fails or not.
It would be good if tentacle installation process did allow to skip installation of the shortcuts if that failed, without rolling back the whole install.
Cheers,
Max
Hi Max,
Did you have any luck with the alternate approach?
In the mean time I’ve raised an issue so we can investigate and hopefully change the installer to move on if that’s all it doesn’t have access to: https://github.com/OctopusDeploy/Issues/issues/3604
Regards,
Nick
Nick, thanks for raising the ticket. I sense this issue will haunt me for every update of Octopus.
By alternative approach do you mean command line install via msiexec /i Octopus.Tentacle.<version>.msi /quiet? I’ve tried that and it run and finished. Did not give me any errors or any other output. But it did not do anything - installed files for tentacle were on the same old version as before the attempt.
Cheers,
Max
Hi Max,
After I raised the issue we had a bigger team chat around it. The requirement for Tentacle and Octopus is that they are installed by an account that has Administrator privileges to ensure they get set up correctly.
Sorry I don’t have the outcome you were hoping for, but trying to work around the need for Administrator privileges for the installation isn’t a direction we want to head for the installers.
Our only recommendation is that you get your IT team to help you do the installation with Administrator privileges, and after that the Tentacle service can be set to run as the user / service account with restricted / lower permissions.
Regards,
Nick
Oh, well. I’ll keep using the hacks on every update then -(
Thanks for looking into this anyway.
Cheers,
Max